Threat and Risk Analysis-Based Neural Network for a Chemical Explosion (TRANCE) Model to Predict Hazards in Petroleum Refinery

Abstract

Risk analysis and prediction is a primary monitoring strategy to identify abnormal events occurring in chemical processes. The accidental release of toxic gases may result in severe problems for people and the environment. Risk analysis of hazardous chemicals using consequence modeling is essential to improve the process reliability and safety of the refineries. In petroleum refineries: toluene, hydrogen, isooctane, kerosene, methanol, and naphtha are key process plants with toxic and flammable chemicals. The major process plants considered for risk assessment in the refinery are the gasoline hydrotreatment unit, crude distillation, aromatic recovery, continuous catalytic reformer, methyl–tert–butyl–ether, and kerosene merox units. Additionally, we propose a threat and risk analysis neural network for the chemical explosion (TRANCE) model for refinery incident scenarios. Significantly, 160 attributes were collected for the modeling on the basis of the significance of failure and hazardous chemical leaks in the refinery. Hazard analysis shows that the leakages of hydrogen and gasoline at the gasoline hydrotreatment unit, kerosene at the kerosene merox plant, and crude oil at crude-distillation units were areas of profound concern. The developed TRANCE model predicted the chemical explosion distance with an R2 accuracy value of 0.9994 and MSE of 679.5343.

Keywords

• process reliability
• refinery
• risk analysis
• TRANCE model